Friday, February 14, 2014

I Heart Momiji Ink

Here’s the sketch I made for the Valentine card I gave to Greg
(sketched with the Pilot Iroshizuku Momiji ink that he gave me for Christmas). When I got the idea for it, I
thought it would be easy. Obviously, I couldn’t sketch both hands at the same
time, but I knew I could easily sketch my right hand and then make its mirror
image next to it. To my surprise, sketching the mirror image of something isn’t
as straightforward as it looks: My brain kept wanting to copy it directly.

I also fooled myself into thinking I could duplicate the
mirror image of the shading. But the way the light was set up on my desk, the
shadows were different on the left hand. So I kept having to make the mirrored shape
with my left hand, pick up the pen to sketch, put the pen back down, make the
shape again, and so forth. The “easy” mirror image turned out to take twice as
long as the original sketch!